Health | April 24th 2017

Wedding Prep with Hannah: Zola to the Registry Rescue

On today’s Wedding Prep series, I want to talk to you guys about how you can now use Zola to register for gifts, and plan your wedding. Zola Weddings just launched, and I wish it had been around at the beginning of our engagement because it was a complete lifesaver. Many brides don’t even know how to start, but Zola Weddings makes it really easy with all-in-one wedding planning tools including wedding websites, customized checklists, and a guest list manager. Zola makes the process so much easier by guiding you through your options and helping you manage your registry and plan your wedding in the most seamless way possible. Here’s a bit about our experience:

At first, the idea of a registry seemed overwhelming, but also not really our thing. We were thinking it would be good to have people donate to a charity in our name, especially with everything that is going on in the world. The more we talked with other married couples, the more they encouraged us to register for things we may want in the future. As we started to think about the best way to get this done, it seemed daunting to have to go into different stores and walk around for hours, but then a friend recommended Zola to me and it sounded perfect. You can register for gifts, experiences, and funds (like our art fund), all in one place. Then one afternoon while I was on the subway I looked up and there it was, Zola, the answer to our registry prayers (love a good subway ad!) It was fate, I signed up right when I got home.

Once I found out Zola launched wedding planning tools, it made total sense to create our wedding website with them as well. It was so easy, and took us less than 15 minutes to add everything for our guests. We chose the Escape design, perfect for our Moroccan wedding. Our site totally reflects us as a couple, we could upload tons of photos not only of us but also our dress code and inspiration board.

It was so easy to do that we kind of got into it for a second. Since we are having a destination wedding, the fact that we can have a customizable checklist to work off of with our wedding planner, plus manage our RSVPs through the guest list manager was a game changer!

The best part of it all is that it integrates into your wedding website and even manages your RSVPs! There is truly nothing I hate more than a copy and paste situation because you can’t export a list! Our invites had already gone out but we were able to message all of our guests through their system to give people the update and can even continue to message everyone with last minute changes should we have any.

There are so many great features that it made this entire process seamless. And we ended up actually really getting into registering. We visited the Zola office, where they built a Townhouse showroom space where you can go and check out different brands and gifts. We started there, and then went home to finish our registry. After an hour of what was essentially online shopping, we were thrilled with how smooth process was! The checklist feature was a major plus, because it helped keep us organized and see what we really needed. Some things we wanted were expensive and since we already asked people to spend money to travel to our wedding we thought, we can get that for ourselves, but then, we realized that there is even a group gift setting so if something is expensive item, a few people can go in on it together! You can even make little funds for things like your honeymoon, art, or a puppy if you will… Oh and if there is something you are dying for and you don’t see it on the site you can add external links!

When all was said and done, we gave our guests the option to donate to charity and/or get us a gift.

One last thing, there is even a mobile app and its user interface is like Tinder… so go try it for yourself already!

If only Zola Weddings had been around at the beginning of our engagement, I wouldn’t have wasted any stress over the wedding planning registry process!